


Identity

by tfm



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Coda, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-03
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 15,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the clutches of Ian Doyle, Emily dwells on her past. Meanwhile, the team are forced to dig deep into their colleague’s secrets in order to find her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Emily couldn’t quite stop the tears as she looked around the bullpen for the last time.

No matter what happened, there was no coming back. No matter what happened, she couldn’t live with the things that she’d done – couldn’t live with the guilt of knowing that she had lied to them.

So even if she did make it away from Doyle unscathed, it was doubtful that she would ever set foot in the BAU again, except maybe to pack up her desk. The way things were going, though, she’d be lucky if she died quickly.

Over the past day, she’d said what farewells she could – they might not have been goodbyes in the strictest sense of the word, but they still had the air of finality to them. The only thing she never really got around to saying was, “I’m sorry.”

 _I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry you got dragged into this._

 _I’m sorry that I had to leave._

Deep down, she knew – the killings would stop, if she turned herself over. CWS might have taken Doyle to Kwan-li-so, but Emily was the reason he’d been captured in the first place.

Nobody noticed as she walked out of the bullpen – they were all too busy listening to Hotch’s summation of events. Emily had heard that summation before, only nine years previously, and that time, it had been Sean McAllister giving it. They’d caught Doyle then, but that hadn’t stopped him from escaping prison, seven years later.

Part of her wanted to leave a note, but nothing she could say would even begin to explain.

 _You gonna run away? Yeah, you’re good at that._ Clyde’s words echoed in her mind. But no – this wasn’t running. Emily wasn’t going to hide from Doyle. She was going to take the fight to him. If that meant putting her life in danger, well – it was a price Emily knew she had to pay.

The team had a trail – what she’d left in the safe was enough to fill in most of the missing pieces. The ring, she’d flushed, because what they didn’t need to know was just how close she’d gotten to Doyle. Some things needed to stay in secret.

Her phone rang, as she made it into the parking garage – as expected, it was Morgan. There was a small part of her that wanted to answer the call, and tell him everything, but she didn’t. There was another part that wanted to throw the phone away, cutting any ties that Doyle might take advantage of, but she didn’t do that either. Instead, she left it, along with her badge, in the back seat of her car. The car, they’d find in a lot somewhere, GPS intact.

Just another breadcrumb.

Right about now, Reid might be pulling up the surveillance footage from Doyle’s Tuscan villa, and just like that, everything would fall into place. It would become abundantly clear that the number one person on Ian Doyle’s list was Emily Prentiss.

Maybe one day, they’d forgive her, even if she wasn’t going to be around for it.

Emily parked her car  - not far from her place, so the team could easily find it when they did come looking. Then, she found a payphone, and called the safehouse where Clyde was.

‘Tsia’s dead,’ she told him when he picked up. There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and Emily couldn’t help but hear the blame in it.

‘ _Are you sure?_ ’

‘I saw the body.’ Emily bit her lip. ‘I got paranoid, and it got her killed.’

‘ _Don’t worry about that – where are you now?_ ’

‘I’m going to him,’ Emily said, which was probably not the answer Clyde wanted to hear, but it was the answer that he needed to hear.

‘ _Are you insane, Emily, he’s going to kill you._ ’

‘People are dead because of me,’ Emily argued. ‘ _Tsia_ is dead because of me. I can’t let that happen to anyone else.’

 _I can’t let that happen to the_ team, was what she really meant, and Clyde knew it.

‘ _Let me come with you,_ ’ he said, ‘ _We’ll take him down together._ ’

‘He’ll kill you straight away, and we both know it,’ Emily said bluntly.

‘ _And what makes you so sure he won’t do the same to you?_ ’

‘If he wanted to just kill me, he would have done it already. The fact that he hasn’t means that something else is on his agenda.’

‘ _Any ideas?_ ’

Emily did have ideas, but none that she was going to share with Clyde Easter.

‘They’re going to contact you,’ she told him. ‘Once they figure out what’s going on. Help them understand, and maybe we can bring down Doyle for good this time.’

‘ _I promised you that you wouldn’t get hurt_.’

‘Yeah, well it’s a little late for that.’ Emily hung up the payphone, and sighed. The city was locked down – there were only so many places that Ian Doyle could be, and she had no doubt in her mind that he would be somewhere where she could find him.

Everything Emily Prentiss had ever done was just preparation for this moment.

It might have been a profound or poetic moment if it wasn’t so depressing.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to herself, but in reality, she wasn’t talking to her herself at all. ‘I’m so, so, sorry…’ In reality, she was talking to Morgan and Reid, to Garcia and Seaver, to Rossi and Hotch. She was talking to her mother, to Tsia, to JJ, to Matthew – to every damn person that had ever been important in her life.

Ian Doyle was waiting for her, in her apartment.

She didn’t know how he’d gotten past the alarm, or the locks, and she didn’t ask. He sat in the loveseat, thumbing through a copy of _Mother Night_.

‘I still read you _Player Piano_ when you were in bed with the flu.’ He gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘I guess that’s the kind of guy I am.’

‘What you are is a ruthless killer,’ Emily spat back.

‘That didn’t seem to bother you when we were together.’

‘That was an act.’

He gave her a knowing smile, and nodded towards the man standing behind her. For a split second, she was so sure that he was going to pull the trigger, but instead, the barrel dropped. Emily could guess what was coming next.

The first blow to the head was stunning, but Emily kept a grip on consciousness. Apparently, that wasn’t what Doyle was after, though, because his henchman followed the pistol-whipping up with a kick to the head.

With all the insomnia she’d been having lately, unconsciousness was almost a relief.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Morgan gripped his phone tightly, as though somehow it would encourage Emily to answer. Instead, it clicked over to voicemail, and he left a message that was more than a little worried. ‘Emily, it’s Morgan – please call me back. Whatever’s happening, we can help.’

‘She’s not in the bathroom,’ Seaver announced, and Morgan’s worry moved up a notch. He figured that maybe whatever had gotten her sick at the crime scene had kicked in again, but deep down, he knew that wasn’t true.

‘Security says she left the complex,’ Rossi announced, hanging up his phone. The team had congregated in the conference room

‘Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s noticed that she’s been acting weird lately,’ he said, looking at Hotch, whose expression was more intense than Morgan had seen in a long time. ‘Coming in late, drinking coffee like she hasn’t slept in four days. Earlier today, she vomited at the double homicide scene.’

‘She’s not pregnant,’ Garcia offered. ‘I already asked. And apparently she hasn’t been sleeping because of a recurring nightmare.’ Garcia’s hands wrung together

In any other circumstance, Morgan might have been amused at Garcia’s line of questioning, but at that point, he was too busy worrying over Emily’s sudden departure.

Hotch frowned. ‘We can’t focus on this right now,’ he said, and even though Morgan could tell that Hotch regretted having to say those words, it wasn’t something he could let go without objection.

‘What the hell, Hotch?’ Morgan snapped. ‘It’s not like she’s just gone to get coffee. She could be in _trouble_.’

‘I know that,’ Hotch said, in the kind of voice that probably would have sent some of the junior agents in the Bureau fleeing for their lives. ‘But at this moment, Doyle is our priority.’

‘Um...’ Reid started. He was sitting at the end of the table, flipping through the surveillance photos from Doyle’s villa on his table. ‘Guys, I think that maybe the reason Emily left had something to do with Doyle.’

‘What do you mean?’

The look on Reid’s face was almost disbelieving as he passed over the tablet. Morgan was vaguely aware of bodies pushing in from all sides to see exactly why Prentiss was involved with Doyle, but his eyes were focused directly on the picture.

It was unmistakeably Emily – her clothes and her were different, she was a little younger, and a lot more carefree, but, more than anything else – the most important thing – she was with Ian Doyle.

‘That photo was taken three days before Doyle’s arrest,’ Reid confirmed. ‘Emily was _there_.’

‘Wait...’ Seaver interjected. ‘Wait – do you think she’s working _with_ Doyle?’

‘No way in hell,’ Morgan spat, so aggressively that Seaver looked taken aback. ‘I don’t care how weird she’s been acting – she’s not working with him.’

Reid frowned. ‘Lauren Reynolds is dead,’ he said softly, and Morgan stared at him.

‘Reid?’

‘It was just something that Emily said a couple of weeks ago – “Lauren Reynolds is dead.” When I asked, she told me she was talking about a friend that had died in a car accident, but...’

He pulled the tablet back over, and brought up the list of names of those who had been at the villa. Lauren Reynolds was the third name on the list.

‘She wasn’t working with him,’ Rossi said. ‘She was _undercover_.’

‘And then she faked Lauren Reynolds’s death so that Doyle would think she was dead,’ Morgan added.

‘If Doyle figured out that she was still alive, does that mean she’d be on his list?’ Garcia asked, fearfully.

‘If she went undercover to bring him down, then she’ll be at the _top_ of his list,’ Rossi reasoned, and Garcia’s eyes widened. Morgan could relate; they’d had cases with team members in danger before, but this seemed so much worse.

‘So why run away?’ Morgan asked, trying not to feel the betrayal that he knew he should. He had asked her what was wrong – so many times – and she had just brushed him off. Now she’d disappeared. ‘Why not tell us? If she could fill in the gaps on our intel, then we could have brought him down.’

That was the million dollar question.

‘Garcia – track Emily’s car, and then see what you can find on her time in Interpol. Seaver, help her. The rest of us will check out her apartment.’ If Seaver was upset by Hotch’s decision, she didn’t show it.

‘Do we want to bring the rest of the task force in on this?’ Rossi asked, and Hotch shook his head.

‘They have their own leads,’ he said, but Morgan gathered that there was some kind of ulterior motive, as well – if they brought in the rest of the task force, then damage control would be a hell of a lot harder.

‘Alright,’ Rossi said. ‘Let’s move.’


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Emily woke up tied to a chair.

To be precise, it was a sturdy, wooden chair, and she was tied at both the wrists and the ankles. Her head throbbed like there was an army of octopi with baseball bats that had taken residence inside the frontal lobe.

In some macabre, fucked up kind of way, this was exactly the way she’d wanted things to go. If Doyle was here, focusing on Emily, then he wouldn’t be out _there_ , killing more people  With the files in her safe, and the intel that Clyde could give them, the team had everything they needed to track Doyle down. They _would_ track him down – of that, Emily had no doubt. Whether it was soon enough to save her life was another matter altogether.

She didn’t know how long it had been since she was brought  to this place – no windows, a single door at the end of the room. No furnishings, save for the chair, and the only light came from a single, flickering bulb. The epitome of cliché.

Hours was good, days was better – for catching Doyle, but not for the concussion she was pretty sure she had. After all the head wounds Emily had received over the years, another one would probably kill her.

They’d taken her gun (which wasn’t surprising) and her watch (which was a little bit surprising). The way her hands were tied meant that there was no way she could have conceivably checked the time, so it didn’t make all that much of a difference.

It was a strange thing, knowing that you’d probably be dead within the next few hours.

The job was a dangerous one – serial killers were not gentle, by any definition of the word, and every time they went out into the field, there was a chance of being shot, or stabbed or blown up.

That was a cliff that they skirted carefully, trying not to fall off the edge. Now, Emily was hanging for dear life by her fingertips, which someone happened to be standing on. Any minute now, she’d fall to her death.

The door swung open, and Emily blinked away the piercing bright light. It was still daytime, but whether that was today or tomorrow was still a matter of contention.

Doyle’s expression was stoic – he played things close to the chest, which was half the reason she’d been forced to go undercover in the first place. In a way, he reminded her of Hotch, only Hotch wasn’t a ruthless killer.

‘Here we are,’ Doyle said, his voice even. There was a quiet anger beneath that voice – Emily had seen the result of that anger, but she’d never directly experienced it. She got the idea that was about to change. ‘Not a Tuscan villa, I’m afraid, but those days are over, Emily.’

He used her name – her _real_ name – rather than the fake one that he’d known her by. Lauren Reynolds was dead on paper. The only place she lived on was in Doyle’s memories, and in Emily’s mind.

He pulled a chair into the room and set it across from her. He didn’t sit down right away – for almost a minute, he stood, and he stared.

Then, he sat.

‘I like Lauren better,’ he said, simply, and Emily almost rolled her eyes. Of course he liked Lauren better. He was _supposed_ to like Lauren better. After all, that persona had been constructed to fit his personality. ‘She was kinder. She was a better person.’

Emily knew that he was goading her, but she also knew that he was right. Lauren Reynolds _was_ a better person. Lauren Reynolds would have gone to her team, told them what was wrong. Lauren Reynolds wouldn’t have snapped at Garcia, wouldn’t have brushed off Reid, wouldn’t have ignored Morgan’s offer for help.

Lauren Reynolds couldn’t have taken on Doyle alone, but then, she wouldn’t have needed to.

‘Do they know?’ Doyle asked, and Emily didn’t answer. ‘Do they know who you are, Emily?’

‘No,’ she told him, not letting her eyes leave his. _But they will_.

They’d find her face in the surveillance photos, and they would find the file in the open safe, and they would put the pieces together. They would find out about Emily, but, more importantly, they would find out about Doyle.

That was all the job came down to, in the end.

Working the profile.

Emily trusted them to do that.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Morgan’s heart damn near stopped when he saw that Emily’s apartment door was wide open. He hadn’t expected her to be there, of course, but in their business, a wide open door never meant anything good. He drew his weapon, hoping – praying – like hell that he wouldn’t have to use it. Behind him, he heard Hotch do the same.

Once they entered the apartment, it became abundantly clear that there was no-one in it. A deadly calm had settled over the place; if Doyle had been here, there was no reason to linger. They cleared the place anyway – Doyle’s team had set fire to the houses of their first two victims. They couldn’t rule out anything incendiary just yet.

He got a strange vibe, walking down the hallway to what he assumed was the master bedroom. It wasn’t just the fact that this felt like an invasion of privacy. More than that, the apartment just didn’t really give him a Prentiss kind of vibe. It was kinda stuffy, and the color scheme didn’t quite fit with the woman that he knew.

 _Profile me again, and you’ll wish you hadn’t_.

He figured that she would mind a little less now, considering he knew that something was going on – something bad. He should have pushed her harder. Anything else – shock, anger, betrayal – that could wait until later. That could wait until they’d found Prentiss.

‘In here,’ Rossi called out, at the same time Morgan saw the safe. It was wide open, the only contents being a thick envelope, and a small blue pouch. Both items he grabbed, not particularly caring about fingerprints.

‘Blood,’ Rossi explained, when Morgan finally made his way to the living room. Morgan’s heart sunk in his chest. Not much blood, but enough to know that something had gone down here.

There was no doubt in his mind that it was Emily’s blood; she had returned home, and Doyle had gotten to her.

Reid frowned. ‘Did anyone see a cat?’

‘Prentiss has a cat?’ Rossi asked, somewhat surprised.

‘Sergio,’ Reid explained. ‘A couple of weeks ago, I asked her if she wanted to come and see _Solaris_ with me, but she said she was going to spend the night with Sergio.’

‘That’s a code for something?’ Morgan frowned.

‘I don’t think she’s been staying here,’ Rossi said. ‘The food in the fridge is mostly out of date

‘Bed’s made, and the only clothes in the hamper are the ones she changed out of yesterday,’ Morgan said. ‘I found these.’ He held out the envelope and pouch, which he could now feel was empty.

Hotch took the proffered items. ‘Morgan, call Garcia and see if she can find any hotel rooms booked in Prentiss’ name or an alias.’

‘We’ve got the car co-ordinates,’ Rossi said, holding up his phone. ‘It’s not far from here.’

‘Go check it out,’ Hotch confirmed.

Morgan made the call to Garcia, who was understandably on edge.

‘ _Any news? Can I rest in peace knowing that it was all some big misunderstanding, and Emily went home because she was tired, and the photo just happened to be her evil twin from the B universe, who’s upset because she doesn’t like aeroplanes?_ ’

‘Sorry, baby girl.’ He was hesitant about mentioning the blood, but Garcia had the right to know. ‘We found blood—’ There was a slight whimper on the other end of the line, ‘and some other clues as to why Doyle might want her, but we’re still looking.’

There was a long silence, and Morgan imagined that Garcia was trying to regain her composure before replying.

‘ _Ok,_ _Agent Ashley whose witty nickname I haven’t quite come up with yet and I are trying to track down Emily’s Interpol records, but apparently their firewalls are state-of-the-art, so it might take some time_.’

‘What,’ he teased, even if his heart wasn’t in it. ‘Ten minutes?’

‘ _Fifteen, tops._ ’

‘While that’s running, I need you to look for any hotel rooms that Emily might have been staying in the past few days.’

‘ _You think she’s known about this for a while?_ ’ Garcia couldn’t quite hide the hurt in her voice. ‘ _Why didn’t she tell us?_ ’

‘I think she was trying to protect us,’ Morgan answered, but that wasn’t an answer that he could fully accept. Emily had to have known that any one of the team would have done _anything_ to help her.

Maybe that was why she left.

 ‘ _Nothing under the name Emily Prentiss_ ,’ Garcia announced, after a few seconds of quick typing. ‘ _I’ll look for aliases._ ’

‘Thanks, Garcia.’

‘ _Find her, Derek_ ,’ Garcia ordered. Morgan hung up and returned to the kitchen, finding Hotch sifting through the contents of the envelope.

‘What is it?’

‘Doyle,’ Hotch said, spreading out the files and photos. ‘We don’t have any of this.’

‘So that’s the classified stuff?’ Morgan queried. ‘If she was undercover, then she probably had to know all about him.’ Hotch drew out a single photo, and Morgan’s breath caught in his throat.

No doubt taken from sometime while Emily was undercover, the picture showed her and Doyle engaged in what looked to be a passionate embrace. In his mind, he’d known that she had been sent in to seduce Doyle, but the photo drove that fact home with a sledgehammer. He would have kissed her, touched her, probably slept with her.

Was she ashamed? Was that why she had kept this from the team?

‘This is more than just revenge,’ Hotch said decidedly. ‘This is personal.’

There was a knock on the door, and Morgan’s hands went straight to his weapon. Hotch nodded, drawing his own weapon.

The man at the door was unarmed as far as Morgan could see, and  was wearing a trench-coat buttoned to the scarf. ‘Are you with the BAU?’ The accent was British, and the way he asked the question meant that he probably already knew the answer.

‘Who are you?’ Morgan asked, not lowering his weapon.

‘My name is Clyde,’ he said. ‘I used to work with Emily.’

‘You’re with Interpol,’ Hotch said – an accusation, rather than a question.

‘Do you know where she is?’ Morgan demanded – whoever the hell this Clyde guy really was, Morgan didn’t trust him.

‘She said she was going after Doyle,’ Clyde said.

‘And you didn’t try to _stop_ her?’

Clyde stared at Morgan, a grim amusement twitching at his lips. ‘I don’t know if you’ve _met_ , Emily Prentiss, Agent, but when she has her mind set on something, it is very difficult to dissuade her.’

‘He _has_ her,’ Morgan spat, angrily. ‘Don’t act like this is some kind of joke.’

‘I am taking this very seriously – why do you think I’m here?’

‘If you’d come forward earlier, then Emily wouldn’t have gone after him.’

‘That was Emily’s decision,’ Clyde told them. ‘According to her, Doyle made threats against the life of your team, if she so much as hinted as to the danger she was in.’

The revelation brought up mixed feelings – Morgan was still hurt that Emily felt like she couldn’t tell the team, but at the same time, he knew that if someone was threatening the lives of the people he loved, he would have done anything possible to keep them out of danger, even if it meant losing his own life.

After everything that had happened, though – after Elle, after Gideon. After Foyet, after JJ, and after everything else between, he wasn’t sure if they could survive losing Emily, too.

Not like this.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

When Doyle came back, it was with a gun, and a butane torch. Emily highly doubted that he was planning on doing any cooking, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what the thing was for.

Emily had seen this man torture the locations of weapons drops out of hardened criminals. Whatever he had planned for her, she didn’t stand a chance.

He brushed her hair back from her neck, softly caressing. His face was so close to hers that she could smell his cologne, mixed with sweat, and it brought back overpowering memories of their time together.

‘Do you love me?’ He moved his head back slightly, and pressed the flame of the torch against the bare skin of her neck, and Emily resisted the urge to scream in pain.

‘I don’t love you,’ she said, teeth damn near biting through her lip. Doyle laughed, and pulled the torch away.

‘Answer the question again,’ he said, ‘Only this time, don’t lie.’

‘I wasn’t lying,’ Emily said, the tail end of her statement turning to a whimper as he pressed the torch into unmarked flesh. She could smell burning flesh, and it made her stomach roil.

‘You might have fooled me for two years, but you can’t fool me now. Do you love me?’

‘No,’ Emily managed, fingers digging into the chair. Technically, it was the truth. As Lauren Reynolds, she might have felt something that seemed like love, but she didn’t feel that now. Especially not when he was trying to torture her into saying otherwise.

‘Do you still have the ring I gave you?’ he asked, pulling the torch away once more.

‘No,’ Emily managed. Again, it was technically true. She might have only gotten rid of the thing earlier today (yesterday?) but it was no longer in her possession.

Emily was almost afraid that he was going to hit her with the torch again, but he didn’t. He sat in the chair opposite her, and set the torch down on the ground.

‘So you really want me to believe that you were just doing your job?’

Emily closed her eyes, trying to will away the pain that would not subside. ‘I _was_ doing my job.’

‘Did they tell you to seduce me?’

‘They told me to get close to you.’

‘So the decision to break my heart was _yours_?’

Emily tried to collect her thoughts, but it wasn’t exactly easy. In addition to her throbbing head, she now had an agonising pain at her neck that was damn near crossing the barrier into complete numbness.

‘I did what I had to do to bring you down.’ Already, Emily knew that Ian Doyle could not be reasoned with. He hadn’t become the leader of a breakaway IRA sect because of his compassion, or his fairness (even if, behind closed doors, he had been a perfect gentleman).

He moved his chair forward, leaning in so that their foreheads were almost touching. She could have head-butted him, but the only thing that would have achieved was making her concussion even worse.

‘Did you love me?’ he asked, his breath hot against her lips.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, hyperaware of the way her eyes were starting to water, and not just from the pain.

She was half-surprised when he kissed her. Tied to the chair, there wasn’t much room for escape, and even then, part of her wanted to kiss him back. She didn’t see him move his right hand. Didn’t feel the gun until it was pressed against her kneecap. Didn’t hear the bang until it was too late to do anything about it.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop the scream that came when he pulled the trigger. He started to speak, and she almost couldn’t hear them over the sound of her own whimpering. The agony was like some fucked up form of sensory deprivation.

‘That is _nothing_ compared to the pain I felt,’ he seethed, and for half a second, Emily was so sure that he was going to end it right there, that he was going to snap her neck, or shoot her again, or wrap his hands around her throat. She almost would have welcomed it.

But no.

That wasn’t Ian Doyle’s style.

He would kill her – of that, there was not a single shred of doubt in her mind. It was too soon, for that. She had seen the way he operated – the way Tsia and the CWS employees had died was practically humane, compared to the way Ian Doyle treated his worst enemies.

He stood, suddenly, gun hanging loose in his grip. There was not a single shed of regret – or doubt – in his eyes.

‘Your team are looking for you,’ he said. ‘Leaving the safe open – that was a nice touch. Do you think they’ll work out all the sordid details of our affair?’

‘They’ll find out what they need to find out,’ Emily said, even those few words were laborious.

‘I think maybe I’ll tell them, right before I kill them. Your betrayal will be the last thing they know.’

Emily’s heart stopped in her chest. ‘You son of a bitch. You said you wouldn’t hurt them, if they stayed out of this.’

He smiled, and it was a terrible, lecherous thing. ‘I said they were innocent. I didn’t say I wouldn’t hurt them.’

They started each other down, and Emily wasn’t sure she’d ever felt _less_ intimidating in her life. She didn’t dare look down at her knee – from the way numbness had set in, she was pretty sure that she really didn’t _want_ to see what it looked like.

‘All’s fair in love and war,’ Doyle said. ‘You’re the one who taught me that, Emily Prentiss.’

He walked away, and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

The car wasn’t hidden – that was the first thing that Rossi noticed. It was parked in the street, not in an oversized lot in the middle of nowhere. That, along with the fact that the GPS had remained intact meant that Emily Prentiss had wanted them to find her vehicle.

‘It’s like she’s leaving a trail of breadcrumbs,’ Rossi commented.

‘Really, that’s the wrong term to be using,’ Reid pointed out. ‘Hansel only left a trail of breadcrumbs because he was unable to collect the white pebbles that he previously used – the breadcrumbs were eaten by the birds of the forest, which was the reason Hansel and Gretel happened upon the witch’s house in the first place.’

Rossi raised an eyebrow, and Reid shrugged. ‘But yes,’ he added. ‘It does seem to be the case.’

He unlocked the car with the spare key that they’d taken from the apartment, and a quick check-over didn’t show anything out of place. No blood, or bullets, or secret documents.

‘I’ve got something,’ Reid announced, when he opened the glove box. He withdrew Emily’s badge, phone and purse. ‘It looks like she took her gun with her.’

‘For all the good it did,’ Rossi frowned.  He wondered what Emily’s intention had been – did she want to kill Doyle? Did she want to keep him away from the team? The way she’d left them clues.

‘Why leave them, though?’ Reid asked, his voice about half an octave higher than normal. ‘Why not just _ask_ for our help?’ And there it was. Reid was upset; after all, Emily Prentiss wasn’t the only person who’d walked out of his life. She might’ve had better reasons for it than William Reid or Jason Gideon, but that didn’t stop the pain that Reid was feeling.

That they were _all_ feeling.

‘I think she was trying to protect us,’ Rossi answered, but the question remained: was she trying to protect them from Doyle, or from herself?

…

‘ _Okay, so I was cross-referencing Emily’s GPS with hotel activity, but my boy genius and his veteran profiling pal found a keycard in Emily’s purse, making my job obsolete_.’ Garcia updated Morgan in a tone that was nothing like her normal, jovial one. ‘ _Said profilers are on their way to that particular hotel now. I also went through her phone records – any calls the last few days – aside from the team – come from a single number._ ’

‘That would be my number,’ Clyde provided.

‘ _Who’s the sexy British man, my chocolate thunder? Why haven’t you introduced me yet?_ ’

‘He’s with Interpol,’ Morgan answered, before Clyde could say anything. ‘He worked with Emily.’

‘We—I was keeping an eye on Doyle, but he dropped off my radar.’

‘We?’ Morgan asked.

‘My colleague and I,’ Clyde answered. ‘Tsia Mosely.’

‘ _As in the Tsia Mosely whose body we found whose entire file is classified?_ ’

‘That would be my guess.’

Morgan frowned, remembering Emily’s reaction to the female body at their last crime scene. ‘Emily knew Tsia Mosely?’ he queried.

‘They were very close,’ Clyde shrugged, and Morgan noted a slight emphasis on the _were_. After everything that had happened, it was no wonder that Emily was scared. ‘Emily feels responsible for her death.’

‘Why would she feel responsible?’ A frown had creased across Hotch’s brow, as though it were a permanent fixture on his face.

‘She didn’t trust me anymore.’ There was a long pause. ‘I’m not sure she trusted anyone.’ The words hit Morgan like a sledgehammer. He so desperately wanted to believe that Emily did trust the team – that what she’d told him not two days ago in the SUV was true. As they learned more about her past, he was beginning to realize that Clyde was probably right. Emily _didn’t_ trust anyone.

Hotch stared around the apartment. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here,’ he said decidedly. ‘We’re going back to the BAU.’ He gave Clyde a look. ‘And you’re coming with us.’

…

Rossi pulled the SUV into the visitor’s parking section of the lot. This was the hotel where Emily Prentiss had been staying for almost two weeks. Any one of the team would have gladly put her up, if she’d told them what was going on. It also would have made them a target, if the information they’d found was anything to go by.

They had the keycard, so they didn’t bother checking in with reception – it would be in, check for anything that could be useful in finding Emily, grab her cat, and then out. If it turned out that the scene needed further processing, _then_ they’d talk to the hotel.

For now, though, Hotch was still intent on keeping this part of the investigation as low key as possible. If this turned pear-shaped, then Emily’s career would be ruined.

They took the elevator up in silence, perhaps a little apprehensive of what they would find. As far as they knew, Emily Prentiss could have lived a whole ‘nother life. Her relationship with Ian Doyle was only the tip of the iceberg.

Rossi stopped as they got to the door. A “Do Not Disturb” sign hung from the knob, which was the warning he needed to dive tackle Reid to the ground.

Overhead, a bullet tore through the door.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Emily jerked into consciousness at the sound of footsteps.

The concept of time had taken on a fuzzy meaning; it could have been seconds since Doyle had left, and it could have been hours. Sometimes it felt like both at the same time. It was the kind of semi-consciousness that she associated with a bad case of the flu, or an intense drug trip.

 _Stay focused, Emily. You won’t survive this if you can’t_ stay focused.

She pulled herself up from her slump, trying to ignore the screaming pain that came from both her knee and her neck. She needed to look Doyle in the eye, and reassure herself that he hadn’t hurt her friends.

Except...

Except it wasn’t Doyle.

It was Liam; Doyle’s right hand man. If anything, he was more ruthless, more dangerous than Doyle. He was the one that usually did the dirty work.

‘Where’s Doyle,’ she managed, hyperventilating with each word.

‘He won’t be back for a while.’ Liam lifted his hand, and Emily caught sight of the knife. Bile rose in her stomach, and she was pretty sure she was going to vomit all over herself. ‘See...he’s got this idea that we should let you live – that killing your friends is somehow penance enough.’ He ran the knife along her shoulder, deep enough to slice through her jacket, but not quite enough to break through the shirt or the skin. ‘Me? I don’t agree.’

The angle of the knife shifted suddenly, and Liam pushed the blade into her should. Emily bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.

‘Doyle wasn’t the only one that lost everything when you betrayed him.’ He wrenched the knife out quickly, and Emily gasped inadvertently. The more pain she felt, the easier to would be for her to crack.

‘I did what I did to support my family.’

‘What you _did_ was illegal,’ she spat.

‘What I did was put food on the table.’ He stabbed her again – a little lower this time, and way too close to the heart for Emily’s comfort.

‘Stop,’ a voice commanded, and Emily felt a sigh of relief. Then, she mentally kicked herself. She wasn’t supposed to be feeling grateful at the sound of Ian Doyle’s voice. ‘Put the knife down, Liam.’

‘You’re going to let her live. I can’t let that happen, Ian.’

‘Put the knife down, or I will shoot you,’ Doyle said calmly. Even in her delirious state, Emily could tell that he wasn’t bluffing. He said what he meant.

Liam put the knife down, but he didn’t look particularly happy about it. ‘You’re going to let her live _again_ , Ian. Are you sure you don’t still love her?’

‘Go check on Peterson,’ Doyle commanded, ignoring the question, which was a pity – Emily kind of wanted to hear the answer.

Doyle dragged the second chair over once more. ‘Your cat is very friendly,’ he commented. Emily stared at him. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt him, which is more than I can say for your friends who came to check out your hotel room.’

Those words were worse than any knife wound, any gunshot. In a moment of unbridled fury, Emily lunged forward, not particularly caring about any of her injuries. ‘I am going to _kill_ you.’ The momentum of her movement toppled the chair. Emily couldn’t stop the scream as her knee hit the floor.

 Her brain overloaded with pain; any words she might have had for Doyle were lost in a sea of firing nerve endings. Hot, wet tears fell, and the bile that had been pushing its way out had nothing left to stop it.

 _You aren’t as strong as you thought you were._

‘You’ve lost your touch, Emily.’ He brushed a hand over her hair, over her shoulder. His touch was almost loving, and yet it would have made Emily want to vomit, if she hadn’t already just done so. ‘And you changed your shampoo.’ He leant down and sniffed at her hair. ‘Juniper. Longevity, strength and fertility. The lavender was nicer.’

The lavender, Emily wanted to tell him, was Lauren. _Lauren_ had loved flowers, and long walks on the beach, and all of those things. Lauren was an enigma that Ian Doyle had wanted to solve.

Now, it was all coming unravelled. He had taken her, he had hurt the team. Whatever happened – whether she survived or not – there was no going back.

 _Eat your heart out, George Webber._

Blood rushed to her head as Doyle righted the chair quickly. Darkness pushed at the edges of Emily’s vision, and she was almost positive that she was about to pass out again.

 _You’re going to die here,_ said a tiny part of her brain.

Emily wasn’t so sure that it was wrong.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Sirens blaring, Hotch broke at least half a dozen road rules in his attempts to reach the hotel as quickly as possible. Reid’s panicked phone call for back-up had been cut short by gunfire; Doyle (or one of Doyle’s accomplices) had been waiting for them.

Hotch made a mental note to implement a full disclosure policy: he didn’t care how classified something was, or how private – if a member of the team knew something, then he was damn well going to get it out of them.

The job was hard enough without taking personal connections into account.

In the passenger’s seat, Morgan was trying as hard as hell not to look freaked out by everything. In the back seat, Seaver was making no such efforts. There were a lot of things they didn’t teach in the academy, and that all consuming fear when a friend and colleague was in danger was one of them.

That wasn’t something that could be taught by _anyone_. That was something that had to be lived. This just happened to be a particularly bad day to be doing it on. They couldn’t afford hesitation, or doubt; taking down Doyle was a task that required the utmost aptitude.

But with one – possibly three – agents down, Hotch didn’t have a choice.

Everything was starting to fall apart.

The hotel receptionist did not look particularly pleased at the idea of a SWAT team storming through the lobby, even if the gunfire and masked men fleeing the building had already scared away almost all guests and potential clients.

With Doyle, though, Hotch wasn’t taking any chances – he wasn’t going up there without a full contingent of backup, just in case any nasty surprises had been left behind. The paramedics followed, waiting for the all clear.

The door of the hotel room was wide open, and Hotch could see the aftermath of the several dozen bullet holes that had torn up the area.

He could see the blood.

Not a lot – it could have come from a nasty paper-cut, or a shard of broken glass, but realistically, he knew that it didn’t.

‘Hotch,’ a voice called out, and Hotch almost seized up in relief. It was Reid’s voice, and it didn’t sound as though he was injured. What he _did_ sound was scared. ‘Hotch, they’re gone.’

‘Are you okay?’ Hotch asked cautiously. For all he knew, Ian Doyle had a gun to Reid’s head.

‘I’m fine – Rossi…’ Reid stepped out of the room, hands in the air. He’d taken his vest off, and the pale blue shirt that he had been wearing underneath was streaked with blood. ‘He needs an ambulance.’

‘I’m fine,’ Rossi called out, from inside the hotel room. ‘It’s just a graze.’ Hotch could tell from the older man’s voice that that wasn’t exactly true.

He stepped inside the room to find Rossi leaning against the bed, blood-soaked towel wrapped around his arm. A black cat rubbed up against him.

‘You’ve got a friend,’ Hotch pointed out, trying not to let the stress show in his voice.

‘He ran into the bathroom for most of the gunfight,’ Rossi told him.

‘What happened?’

‘He shot through the door when we got here, so we figured that the best way to get in was through the door that connects to the next room.’ There was a beat of silence. ‘It wasn’t. I tagged one of them, but they got away.’

‘He could have easily killed us,’ Reid added. ‘I don’t know why he didn’t.’

‘There’s something else,’ Rossi added, sending Hotch a look of annoyance as the paramedics rushed into the room. He attempted to move his head around them to keep in eye contact. ‘One of them took my badge.’

Hotch frowned. It didn’t exactly fit the profile of Doyle’s group. They killed without mercy. There was something else to this.

‘You think he’s messing with us?’ Morgan asked.

‘That doesn’t fit the profile,’ Hotch said, his frown persisting. ‘There has to be a reason for what he’s doing.’

There was a long pause. ‘You think he’s doing it to torture Emily?’

Hotch considered the thought – it was the most likely possibility. If Ian Doyle wanted to destroy Prentiss, then he would do it by threatening her team – her family.

‘Call Garcia,’ he instructed Morgan. ‘We need to find footage of whatever vehicles Doyle’s team is driving – both from here, and from Emily’s apartment.’

‘He’s obviously remained in the area, if managed to get to the hotel so quickly.’

‘How did he know we were going to be here?’ Rossi grunted, steadfastly refusing to be loaded onto a stretcher and carried into an ambulance.

‘Dave,’ Hotch said pointedly. ‘Go with them. Reid – you too.’ Before any of the team could argue, he added. ‘I don’t want anyone going anywhere alone.’

‘You think we’ve got a mole?’ Morgan asked quietly. He frowned, staring down at the cat that was rubbing enthusiastically against his leg. The creature meowed as he gathered it into his arms.  ‘Apart from the team, who knew that Reid and Rossi were going to the hotel?’

‘I think it’s time we had a talk with Clyde Easter,’ Hotch said.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Minutes ticked away with painful sluggishness. Liam did not return, but neither did Doyle, leaving Emily to her own hellish thoughts. What had he done to her team? Had he killed them all, in a hail of machine gun fire? Did they fall like dominos, chests full of lead, and knowing full well the horrific fate that she had led them to?

He was systematically taking away her life, just like he had promised.

It was another twenty minutes before he returned, a bottle of water in one hand, and a plastic food tray in the other. He set them down on the ground, and pulled a knife from his pocket. ‘What are you doing?’ Emily murmured, half surprised that she still had the energy to talk.

‘Come now, Emily,’ he said, lips twitching with amusement. ‘You have to eat.’

She choked out a laugh. ‘Seriously?’

‘Don’t try to run,’ he said warningly, as he cut the bonds at her wrists and ankles. Emily was almost positive that even with an overload of adrenaline, she wouldn’t have been able to make it more than a few steps.

The smell of the food wafted towards her nostrils, and Emily was torn between salivation and vomiting again. She remembered the romantic candlelit dinners, and the slow passionate lovemaking that followed. She remembered laughing, as he told her a joke, the smile on his face not one that any other member of the IRA sect would ever see.

She rubbed at her wrists, raw with rope burn. ‘You still cook?’

‘Some things never change.’

‘Coq au vin? A little sophisticated for a dungeon of torture, don’t you think?’

‘Is it still your favorite?’

‘It was never my favorite.’

He gave a twisted smile. ‘Lauren’s favorite, then.’

‘Lauren...’ Emily struggled with her words. This was the simple fact that she had been trying so hard to deny her whole life. ‘Everything that Lauren did...Everything that Lauren loved, was based on a part of me.’

Only Emily Prentiss preferred chilli cheese fries to coq au vin. That was something that didn’t make it into her cover, because Ian Doyle wasn’t looking to fall in love with an all-American girl who went to Coney Island in the summer. Not that Emily Prentiss had ever been that girl.

She hadn’t been the cheerleader that wore flag panties and got drunk on patriotism on July the fourth. She was the girl that had grown up around the world, the girl that had gotten pregnant in Italy, the girl that had dyed her hair black, and gotten a tattoo.

That life, more than anything, was the life that had made her the right choice to seduce Ian Doyle.

‘Even the part of Lauren that would put a bullet in a man’s head?’

‘I did what I had to do.’

He looked her in the eyes, so deep, so penetrating. He didn’t believe her. She wasn’t so sure that _she_ believed it either.

Doyle set the tray on Emily’s lap, and handed her a plastic fork. Surprisingly enough, she still had enough dexterity and enough feeling in her fingers to eat without making a mess of herself.

Her throat was so dry, she almost choked on the food. Without even asking, Doyle passed over the bottle of water. It was a sore blow to Emily’s profiling skills that she couldn’t really tell what he was thinking. His attitude had shifted between anger and adoration. She would have called it almost sociopathic, only she knew that those feelings were genuine.

It was almost pathetic, to think that this was the only man that had ever loved her.

She’d had other boyfriends of course, but none of those had ever lasted longer than a couple of months. She had the team, but that was a familial relationship.

 _You always hurt the one you love._

He took the tray away when she’d finished – the food had satiated her hunger, but it hadn’t done anything to help the sickness in her stomach.

He pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it to her feet. It was Rossi’s badge.

Bloodstained.

She stared at it for a good minute, wordless. Her stomach lurched violently. It wasn’t conclusive evidence that the team were dead, but it did suggest that there had been some altercation.

‘What did you...?’

‘I shot him.’

Emily choked out a sob. ‘You fucking bastard.’

‘Did you love him?’

It took her a long time to process his words. ‘What?’

‘Did you love him?’

‘He’s _family_ ,’ she spat, shoulders shaking. ‘What did you do to the rest of them?’

The twisted smile he gave was not comforting, nor was it gloating. She was so sure that if he’d killed them, he would have made sure that she knew about it.

He took the tray and the empty water bottle, and he left. It took Emily over a minute to realize that he hadn’t bothered to tie her up again.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Hotch sat across from Clyde Easter and stared. Morgan had once seen a suspect burst into tears under that gaze, but all Clyde did was cross his arms and raise an eyebrow. ‘Why are we here?’

‘We’re here because you’re leaking information to Ian Doyle.’

Clyde did not seem overly perturbed by the line of questioning. ‘You’re serious.’

‘I’m never not serious.’

‘You really think that I would spend three years of my life to bring down a man that I was working for?’

‘You’re the only one that knew my team were going to the hotel.’

Clyde laughed; it was not a happy laugh. Derek kind of felt like punching the guy. ‘Agent Hotchner, I can’t imagine how you ever lost a case with such concrete evidence. Ian Doyle has a network of criminal contacts that would make any Mafioso blush with embarrassment – it would not be beyond him to know that Emily Prentiss was staying in a hotel. It would not be beyond him to have sources within the FBI.’ There was a long pause. ‘Do you trust your team?’

‘With my life,’ Hotch countered.

Clyde relaxed his shoulders slightly. ‘Emily trusts you too – don’t doubt that. She would have done anything, just to keep you safe.’

 _But she didn’t trust us to keep_ her _safe_ , Morgan thought to himself. ‘You don’t seem overly upset that she’s missing.’

Clyde shot him a dirty look – the first outward show of significant emotion that Morgan had seen from the man.

‘Agent Morgan, it is just as important for me to keep my emotions in check in my line of work as you do in yours. Not that any of you seem to be doing an overly good job of it. When I sent Emily Prentiss undercover, I _promised_ that I would not let her get hurt. That promise is broken, now.’

‘How long have you known Emily?’

‘Long enough to know that “befriending” Ian Doyle was the hardest thing she ever did.’

 _And we never even knew about it_.

‘When you say “befriend” you mean seduce, right?’ Morgan queried.

They’d seen the photos, of course, but he needed to hear it from someone who had been there. Clyde did not answer, but gave a look that all but confirmed his suspicions. ‘But that wasn’t what she found the most troubling.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Morgan demanded.

‘She spent two years undercover in an attempt to get closer to an _arms_ dealer,’ Clyde said bluntly. ‘There was bloodshed.’ He didn’t elaborate, and Hotch didn’t ask him to. Morgan was a little stunned by the revelation. He had been in deep cover himself, once, but that was mostly street level drug stuff, not international weapon rings.

It was no wonder she had never told them. If he knew Emily Prentiss then she still felt a bucketload of guilt for whatever things that she’d done, in the name of the job or not. There was a difference between pulling the trigger when an unsub was about to kill his victim, and pulling it when there was no immediate threat, and Morgan was willing to bet on the fact that this kind of bloodshed was the latter.

‘How much?’

‘Enough.’

‘Is there any place you know of where he would have taken her? A place that has some kind of meaning for him?’

‘Doyle ran his operation out of Boston,’ Clyde told them, ‘But he had outposts in a lot of cities. He could be anywhere.’

The pronouncement was not a particularly helpful one. Morgan didn’t realize how much they’d had banking on Clyde’s knowledge of Doyle’s activities. That, in conjunction with the fact that every single damn file in this case seemed to be classified meant that they knew a lot less than they should have.

‘...But,’ Clyde continued, ‘We _have_ been keeping an eye on his movements, which are somewhat sporadic – it might not tell you where he is definitively...’

‘But it will narrow down the geographic profile,’ Morgan finished. Which meant they needed to get Reid back from the hospital as quickly as possible.

‘I want to help,’ Clyde announced, in the kind of voice that suggested he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. ‘Emily Prentiss has been a friend for a long time. If Doyle kills her...’

Hotch and Morgan shared a brief look. Technically speaking, as an Interpol agent, he had the authority to be there. It wasn’t as though he was a civilian.

‘Alright,’ Hotch said eventually. ‘But you do not get to participate in the raid, and if I see _one thing_ , to indicate that you have _anything_ to do with this, you will regret it.’ There was a quiet fury in Hotch’s voice, and Clyde didn’t even react.

‘How much longer do you think he’ll keep her alive?’ Morgan asked Hotch in a low voice, once they were out in the hallway.

‘For all we know, she’s dead already,’ Hotch said, with a grimace on his face. ‘But...if the profile is right, then he won’t kill her until he’s sure that she’s suffered enough. With someone like Doyle, that could be weeks.’

The problem wasn’t just about _finding_ Emily, Morgan knew. It was about finding her _before_ Doyle broke her. They’d seen enough torture in their line of work to know that indescribable pain could be delivered in seconds. He didn’t even want to _think_ about what could happen in hours, or days, or weeks.

If he broke her, they would have as good as lost Emily anyway.

For the first time in what felt like years, Derek Morgan prayed.


	11. Chapter 11

Getting up was not an option. The bullet wound, in addition to the fact that Emily had been tied to a chair for the last few hours, meant that she couldn’t feel a damn thing in one leg, and the muscles simply did not want to work in the other. There was a name for that, one that the tendrils of her mind kept reaching for, but she couldn’t even do that.

If she simply just fell off the chair, maybe she could crawl to the door, but it wasn’t exactly the mostly tactically advisable position. Doyle hadn’t forgotten to tie her up – he’d known that she wouldn’t be able to do anything. It was just another way for him to taunt her.

Still, she no longer had the hot burn of rope against her skin. That was something. The blood from her knee wound had now soaked through the pant leg down to the ankle. The shoulder wound wasn’t much better. Emily didn’t know how much blood she’d lost, compared to what she still had left, but she did know that she didn’t have long. An hour, tops, if she managed to stay conscious – and even that was a tough sell.

Whatever happened, it was all going to end today.

...

Reid went over the map of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. There was a slight chance that they had left the city altogether, but the fact that Doyle had returned to the hotel made it unlikely.

The security footage from the hotel, and from near Emily’s apartment building had provided some direction, if not the labelled roadmap they had been hoping for. Evidently, Doyle had enough resources at his disposal to be able to switch vehicles away from prying electronic eyes.

Clyde Easter’s intel, however, had narrowed the possibilities down a lot further.

‘Where would he take her?’ Seaver asked, frowning at the map.

‘If he wants revenge, then he would take her somewhere that has some kind of meaning. Additionally, the location would most likely be fairly isolated.’

‘Why?’ Realization kicked in a moment later. ‘Oh. You think that he’s...um...tortured her?’

‘It fits the profile,’ Reid answered, not looking away from the board. He did not particularly want the cadet to see the look in his eyes.

...

Emily felt the cold metal of the gun against her head. She closed her eyes.

‘Are you ready to die?’ Doyle asked.

‘Are you ready to kill me?’ she murmured.

He didn’t pull the trigger, so she could only assume that his answer was no.

It seemed almost a pity that her answer was yes.

...

The SUV cut through traffic at breakneck speeds.

They had narrowed the geographic profile down to two locations, and Morgan was hoping like hell that they hadn’t missed something big. Something like, “Oh, Ian Doyle is actually a good guy, and you’ve completely screwed this up.” After all the twists the case had taken – after everything that Morgan had learnt about the woman he thought he knew – it somehow wouldn’t have been surprising.

He strapped on his vest, and made sure his weapon was ready to go. Between him and the SWAT team, there was enough firepower to take down a small country. He had no doubt that it was exactly the same with Hotch at the other location.

If they failed to take down Doyle...if they _lost_ Emily...That was an eventuality he wasn’t sure he could deal with, even if she had lied to them.

Whatever happened, they had to win.

...

Ian’s hand brushed her neck, and for a moment, Emily could imagine that they were lying in bed after a session of passionate lovemaking, or snuggled together on the sofa in front of a roaring fire.

‘I love you, Emily,’ he said. If she had a little more cognitive function, Emily might have been able to analyse the fact that he had called her Emily, instead of Lauren.

‘I loved you...once.’

‘Do you love me now?’

‘You’re making it kind of hard.’

Ian gave a chuckle. ‘Our relationship was never easy.’

‘Maybe...’ she breathed, trying to surge through the light-headedness. ‘If you weren’t a psychopath.’

Doyle kicked the chair out from underneath her, and Emily fell, sprawling to the floor. She couldn’t move out of the way of his foot, as it cracked into her ribs. She couldn’t even turn to face him.

This was it.

Her final moments.

Her eyes closed, and the conscious world seemed to recede around her. A gunshot pierced the air, and she wondered why she didn’t feel any pain.

...

‘Emily!’ Morgan called out, letting his gun drop to the ground as he rushed to her side. Doyle had gone down with a single bullet, and the less said about the way his brain splattered across the wall, the better.

Emily was in bad shape. Doyle hadn’t pulled any punches; there were burns on her neck and throat, and the top half of her shirt was soaked through with blood. That wasn’t even the worst of it; her knee looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, and for all he knew, that was exactly what had happened.

He put a hand to her neck, and felt a slow, almost imperceptible pulse. ‘Emily, can you hear me? Someone get me a medic!’

‘Morgan?’ Emily murmured – at least, that’s what he figured she was saying. Her words were slurred to the point where it sounded more like gibberish than anything else.

‘I’m here, Em – Doyle’s dead. Everything’s going to be okay.’

Emily stared up at him with broken eyes, and for a moment, Morgan doubted his own words.

Whatever happened, everything he ever knew about Emily Prentiss had changed.


	12. Chapter 12

He wasn’t entirely sure whether Emily could feel him, or even hear him, but Derek Morgan held her hand, and kept talking anyway. It didn’t matter what she’d done – not right now. Maybe later, when she was alive, and breathing, and not bleeding to death on the floor of a _fucking_ warehouse, he might find it in himself to ask her why, but not now.

When the paramedics came, he wanted to keep on holding that hand. It pained him to let go when they lifted her into the ambulance.

‘Call Agent Hotchner and tell him that we found her, and that she’s alive,’ he informed one of the SWAT members, who gave only a short nod in reply. Morgan hoped like hell that his words would not turn out to be a lie. After everything they’d been through to find Emily, to lose her would be the worst thing imaginable.

Morgan had lost count of the number of times he had ridden in the back of an ambulance – in some cases it was to accompany someone to the hospital, a couple of times, he had been the one on the stretcher. He couldn’t quite get over the feeling of helplessness as he watched the one paramedic cut off the lower half of her pant leg, and another working on her shirt.

His breath caught in his throat when he saw just how much damage the bullet – definitely a bullet, he could see now – had done. It was something that he hadn’t really taken into consideration in a long time. He could close his eyes and still remember his father, lying still and unmoving, after an inch-long piece of lead had torn through his chest.

Since then, he’d tried not to look at the physical effects of the bullets, but in this case, it was almost unavoidable. He’d heard from someone (probably Reid) that the knee was the most painful place to take a bullet, and that almost ten percent of victims underwent amputation. It was also, funnily enough, a chosen method of the IRA.

Suddenly, it somehow didn’t quite seem enough that Ian Doyle was dead. He had died quickly, and in not nearly enough pain to compare to his torture of Emily Prentiss.

So focused on Emily, that he almost didn’t notice when the ambulance jerked to a stop. He could only watch as the paramedics rushed her into emergency. One of the nurses on duty led him towards a waiting area, and Morgan’s mind was so numb that he could only follow.

...

The rest of the team arrived in due course; Garcia, with her unrepentant fear, Rossi with his arm in a sling, Seaver, eyes wide with fear and trepidation, and Reid, who was some strange mixture of strength and fragility.

Hotch, though, was the one that Morgan needed. Now that Hotch was there, he could leave the waiting room, without feeling as though he was abandoning Emily.

‘How bad is it?’ the Unit Chief asked as Morgan stood.

Morgan shook his head. ‘Hard to tell. Gunshot wound to the knee, and a couple of stab wounds to the shoulder. She’d lost a fair bit of blood, but she was still lucid when I found her.’

 _Lucid_ was a strong way of putting it – she had been conscious, and she had been aware of him, but she had been in far, far too much pain to say anything beyond his name.

Her blood was still on his hands.

Morgan went to the bathroom, and scrubbed at it for what felt like an eternity, but it didn’t seem to want to wash clean. He blinked, and realized that his hands _were_ clean, only his mind didn’t really want to believe it.

One way or another, there was still blood on his hands.

If he had pushed her a little harder – or a little softer – maybe she would have opened up to him. Maybe, he wouldn’t be sitting around in a hospital, waiting to find out that one of his best friends was dead, or permanently crippled, or comatose, or any number of horrific outcomes to the situation.

Morgan tensed as the bathroom door swung open. Even with his arm in a sling, the older profiler still had the self-confident nonchalance that usually preceded one of his “talks.”

‘How’re you doing?’

‘I’m fine.’

Rossi raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? Because nobody else is “fine.”’

‘I don’t want to talk about it right now,’ Morgan told him shortly. ‘I just want to...I just want Emily to be okay.’ His voice cracked on the words, and it took everything he had not to break down in tears.

Rossi put an arm around his shoulder. ‘It’s gonna be okay.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘No, I can’t,’ Rossi admitted. ‘But I do know that Emily Prentiss is stubborn enough to kick the Grim Reaper in the shins.’

Morgan shook his head. ‘You don’t know how broken she looked, man. The look in her eyes...it was like she wanted to die.’

Rossi didn’t seem to have an answer for that, but he clapped Morgan on the back anyway. ‘Come on. Let’s go get some coffee.’

Morgan nodded.

Coffee sounded good.


	13. Chapter 13

Morgan shifted uncomfortably in the chair beside Emily’s bed. He had volunteered to stay overnight in the hospital room, but from the way his neck was starting to ache, that was something he would regret in the morning.

It had been several hours since Emily had come out of surgery – stabilized, but nowhere near out of the woods. The bullet had caused enough damage that the knee would need to be replaced entirely – a procedure they would not conduct until after she had regained consciousness from this one. While the prognosis wasn’t exactly terrible, Derek Morgan had enough experience with knee injuries to know that even if Emily did come back to the team, there was no way she’d be working in the field anytime soon.

There would be months of frustration and rehabilitation, not to mention limping and sweating and swearing. More than that, though, he was worried about _who_ was going to wake up from that hospital bed.

The Emily Prentiss he knew would be arguing with doctors, and attempting to get herself signed out days before it was safe to do so. The trouble was, Morgan wasn’t sure if he knew Emily Prentiss at all, anymore.

Was that nerdy and awkward, yet somehow amazingly confident woman just an act? What other secrets was Emily keeping?

It was late – or rather, early – when she started to stir. Morgan had just started to doze off, but the sound of a groan – that beautiful, wonderful, amazing sound – was enough to jerk him into a permanent wakefulness.

‘Emily?’

‘Where am I?’ Emily murmured, trying to pull herself upwards, to no avail. Morgan laid a hand on her uninjured shoulder.

‘You’re in hospital,’ he told her. Her eyes flickered open, more lucid than he would have expected from someone who had been unconscious for the last twelve hours. That wasn’t even mentioning the morphine in her system.

‘Oh,’ she said, and closed her eyes again. While her consciousness had been short-lived, Morgan still felt relief flood through his system. While he was reluctant to leave her side, he knew that he needed to tell a doctor – or a nurse, or _someone_ – that she had woken up, even if it had just been for those few moments.

After that, getting back to sleep wasn’t an option. Morgan kept his eyes glued to the hospital bed – watching for any movement. Anything at all. It didn’t come until the sun started creeping in through the window.

Emily gave another groan this one much more self-aware than the last. ‘Fuck,’ she muttered.

‘Are you in pain? Do you want me to get a doctor?’

Emily brushed him off. ‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Well...as fine as someone can be after getting the shit kicked out of them.’

In spite of himself, Morgan grinned. _This_ was the Emily Prentiss that he knew.

‘Speaking of,’ Emily continued, wincing as she tried to sit up. Morgan found the remote for the bed so that she didn’t have to move. ‘What happened to Doyle?’ The look on her face was one of apprehension, and Morgan almost regretted having to answer the question.

‘Doyle’s dead,’ he revealed. Emily nodded, understanding, but after a few seconds, she started wiping the tears from her eyes, frustrated.

‘Shit,’ she muttered, shaking her head. ‘You know, we spend every single _fucking_ day of our lives getting into people’s heads...Sometimes we leave the doors open. Sometimes they get into ours, too.’

Morgan nodded. ‘I guess...it would have been worse with Doyle.’ He couldn’t even pretend to understand what it would feel like, but he knew that much. ‘Living with that every day.’

Emily gave a half shrug, wincing at the pull on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I never told you about him,’ she said, looking down at the bedsheets. ‘I was...ashamed at what I had to do, and I was afraid at what he might do to the team if he knew that you were after him.’

Morgan couldn’t quite accept that excuse, but at the same time, he wasn’t going to push the matter – not yet. As much as he felt betrayed by Emily’s actions, he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her; to death, or to anything else that could have taken her. If that happened, it would tear their team – their _family_ – apart.

The rest of the team came in fairly quickly, once Morgan contacted them. They all focused on the joy of seeing Emily alive, rather than the circumstances that had led to her hospitalization, and yet Morgan could see the pain in her eyes – they all could. Their presence seemed to be as much a hindrance as it was a help, and yet Morgan would not let himself leave. Emily needed them, even if she wasn’t quite ready to admit it.

So he stayed by her side, as the doctor came and discussed her prognosis. She balked slightly at the idea of a knee replacement, and Morgan didn’t blame her.

‘It’s okay,’ Rossi assured her. ‘You know they have to do it.’

She gave another half shrug, this time with her uninjured shoulder. ‘I guess I just don’t exactly like the idea of becoming a cyborg,’ she said, but from the tone of voice, there was definitely something more to it. After all, the damage had been caused by a bullet, not a tumble down the stairs. Psychological healing was just as important as physical.

For all of them, in the end.

The same way it always had been.


	14. Chapter 14

The silence was overwhelming.

The team had been in North Carolina for almost two weeks; in spite of his still-healing wound, Rossi had accompanied them, restricted to victimology. In the meantime, Emily’s only company had been doctors, and an ever-changing array of nurses.

 Since her knee surgery, and the healing of her shoulder, she’d been in rehab. Four days now, and she hadn’t made as much progress as she would have liked.

Maybe one day, she could walk a dozen steps without pausing for breath.

Fortunately, she didn’t need to be in hospital to rehabilitate.

Realistically speaking, all she needed was to show up to her appointments, and taking a cab was easy enough. She didn’t want to stay in hospital any longer than she had to.

So when the nurse came by the next time, Emily asked the woman to bring her some discharge papers. The nurse stared, as if she hadn’t quite heard the words right.

‘Agent Prentiss, you understand—’

‘Believe me, I know,’ Emily interjected. ‘I have signed out of hospital AMA before. I will sign whatever waiver you put in front of me, but I would like to discharge myself, please.’ She felt like a Grade A bitch for putting it so harshly, but she knew that she had to do it. She didn’t want to lie in a hospital bed while the team shot accusatory glances at her.

She couldn’t deal with that on top of everything else.

So she signed the half dozen forms that promised she wouldn’t sue the hospital if she suddenly died immediately after leaving, and so on and so forth.

It took far longer than it should have to dress, and Emily grimaced at the pain of putting her legs through pants.  But there was no way in hell she was leaving dressed in a hospital gown. And while her crutch skills had improved dramatically over the last few weeks, one thing that the hospital wouldn’t budge on was the wheelchair factor.

Emily grudgingly obliged as the nurse pushed her towards the hospital doors. There was a cab rank right outside, and thankfully, her wallet was one of the few possessions that she _did_ have on her.

Crutches in hand, she levered herself into the back of the waiting cab. ‘Where to?’ the driver asked, and Emily paused.

Shit.

Where was she going to go?

Chances were, her apartment was a crime scene, and even then, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to be there anyway.

So she pulled the name of a hotel from memory; not the best hiding place, but then, she wasn’t looking for a place to hide.

All she wanted was to sleep.

...

Garcia spun in her chair, paying her utmost attention to the watermelon-flavored lollipop she was sucking.

They had finally tracked down their devious perpetrator, and the team were flying home. Not a moment too soon. It had been far too long since she’d seen any of her babies in the flesh; the poor-resolution video from laptop webcams just wasn’t the same.

There was a beep, and a pop-up, and Penelope Garcia frowned.

The case was over – she shouldn’t have had any search programs running. The only notification program she has was—

 _Oh no._

 _Please, Emily, no._

Garcia trusted Emily Prentiss, to the death. But that hadn’t stopped her from keeping very detailed tabs on the other woman’s hospital stay. The last thing any of them needed was for her to disappear once more.

She called the hospital first, in the hopes of being able to find someone to track Emily down, so that Garcia could put her nagging skills to the test.

She’d already left. In a cab, no less.

‘You let someone who can barely walk leave the hospital in a _cab_?’ she screeched. At this moment, Garcia did not particularly care about a thing such as AMA. She needed to screech at someone.

But yelling at hospital employees would do no good.

Instead, she called Hotch, her heart beating a million times a minute. ‘ _Garcia?_ ’ She could almost _hear_ the frown in his voice.

‘Emily’s gone,’ she blurted out without preamble. It took half a second for her to realize how that could have sounded. ‘She checked herself out of hospital.’

‘ _When?_ ’

‘Fourteen minutes ago,’ Garcia told him. ‘Her nurse says she took a cab somewhere, but, uh…she couldn’t remember the cab number.’

If Hotch had a comment on this matter, he said nothing, which was decidedly Hotch-like of him. ‘ _We’re half an hour away – see if you can track her down in the meantime_.’

‘Can do, captain,’ Garcia told him, saluting, even though she knew he couldn’t see it.

The moment he hung up, she hacked the hospital security footage. Of course, it wasn’t something that she was technically _supposed_ to be doing, but if you couldn’t break the law to help your friends, when could you?

Ian Doyle had already done enough to tear her family apart. She’d be damned if she was going to let it happen again.

…

‘Let me guess,’ Rossi said drily as soon as Hotch put his phone away. ‘Someone checked themselves out of hospital.’

Hotch gave a grimace that confirmed Rossi’s suspicions.

‘You’re kidding me,’ Morgan said, exasperated. ‘Where is she?’

‘Garcia’s looking into it,’ Hotch told them. ‘But for what it’s worth, I don’t think she’s running away.’

‘Why not?’ Morgan demanded. ‘It’s what she did last time.’ A look of disappointment cast over his features – as though he had been expecting a different outcome.

‘We know Emily. She checked herself out,’ Hotch reiterated. ‘If she wanted to run away, she wouldn’t have done that.’

Morgan shook his head. ‘After everything that’s happened, Hotch, I don’t think we know Emily Prentiss at all.’


	15. Chapter 15

It was just Emily’s luck that there was nothing good on TV.

She’d checked herself out of hospital and braved an excruciating, painkiller-free cab ride to the hotel only to discover that their cable package _sucked_. Her body wanted to sleep, but her mind wasn’t having any of it.

The next yawn, when it came, was a big one, and Emily’s eyes fluttered shut for a few seconds before she jerked back to reality, the movement jarring at her knee.

So she mindlessly flipped through the channels. It was uncomfortably similar to what she’d done at the hospital, only the bed was a lot nicer, and she didn’t have to deal with nurses poking and prodding every half hour.

The one good thing, though, was that the food options were a damn sight better. She read through the room service menu quickly, not so much caring what she ate, as long as it wasn’t strawberry flavored Jell-O.

She grabbed the phone by the bed, and went to dial. She was asleep before she even made it to the second number.

…

By the time they landed, Garcia already had a hotel name for them. Morgan was a little surprised – he had thought that Emily would have tried harder to hide from them.

‘ _She booked in with her own credit card,_ mon cher,’ Garcia told him, apparently guessing his thoughts. ‘ _She’s not trying to hide at_ all.’

‘Unless it’s a false trail,’ he countered.

‘ _Why are you so eager to believe that she betrayed us?_ ’ Garcia snapped, and there was an awkward silence. Penelope Garcia rarely snapped, least of all at Morgan. He softened slightly.

‘I’m sorry, baby girl, I just…I need to know why she lied to us.’

‘ _So do I, but that doesn’t mean we have to write her off as evil incarnate – she deserves better than that._ ’

‘Alright,’ he promised her, and he meant it. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe he just _wanted_ to feel angry about the whole situation. ‘We’ll call you back when we’ve found her,’ he said, reassuringly.

The drive to the hotel took longer than he liked. Each minute they spent in the car was another minute where something else could have gone wrong.

When they got to the hotel, Hotch badged his way through to the reception desk. They were getting stares from the rest of the hotel guests. ‘Can I help you?’ the concierge asked, nose more than a little upturned at their presence.

‘SSA Hotchner, with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I need to ask you some questions regarding a woman that booked into your hotel today,’ Hotch said authoritatively.

‘Agent Hotchner, I would be happy to help,’ the concierge continued, in a voice that suggested he was absolutely not happy to help, and, more to the point, wanted the FBI out of the hotel as quickly as possible. ‘But I don’t have contact with every guest that comes through here, and even if I did, there’s no way I would remember all of them.’

‘She would have been on crutches,’ Morgan provided. ‘And probably pretty stubborn, too. Her name is Emily Prentiss.’

‘Ah,’ the other man said with realization. ‘Of course. Miss Prentiss was quite insistent on getting a room immediately.’

‘What room?’ Rossi interjected.

‘I’m afraid I can’t—’

‘How quickly do you want us out of your foyer?’ Morgan asked.

The concierge glared at him. ‘Just let me check…Ms. Prentiss is booked into a room on the eighth floor – Room 806. Would you like me to call up for you?’

‘No,’ Morgan said, while Hotch said, ‘Yes,’ simultaneously.

‘Call up,’ Hotch reiterated. The concierge did so, treating them all to half-nervous, half-suspicious looks.

‘The phone is off the hook,’ he explained. ‘But I can give you a keycard.’

And that was how the BAU team found themselves squeezed into an elevator. A man in a business suit was about to follow them on, before quickly deciding against it.

The ride up was silent.

An awkward silence that didn’t usually accompany their work. Over the years they’d learned to become comfortable with one another, and it almost seemed as though all of that had disappeared.

Room 806 was just down the hallway from the elevator. Morgan led the way, hoping like hell that he wasn’t going to find something ugly inside. He had seen up close what Ian Doyle had done, and even amongst the feelings of betrayal, there was a fear that something similar might have happened again.

He knocked on the door.

No answer.

‘Emily?’ he called out.

No answer.

Cautiously, he pulled out his gun.

‘Morgan.’

‘Just in case,’ he said, taking the keycard and inserting it into the slot.

The door swung open.

…

Emily jumped awake at the sound of the door opening. Heart beating like a jackhammer, she grabbed at the most weapon-like thing within arm’s reach, which happened to be the lamp on the nightstand.

She saw Morgan almost instantly, but it took several seconds for her brain to catch up. His gun was out, and she froze, fingers gripping the base of her weapon tightly.

‘Emily,’ he said, in what sounded like his attempts at being reassuring. ‘It’s alright – I’m putting the gun away.’

It took another few moments for the adrenaline to die down, and for Emily to reassure herself that she didn’t need to give Morgan a concussion with a table lamp. He wasn’t alone, she noticed, then – Reid and Hotch were both behind him as he stepped into the room, followed by Rossi, who wasn’t even supposed to be on active duty. Seaver hesitated by the door, before pulling it shut behind her.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ she said, not looking at any of them in particular, but it probably didn’t take a profiler to figure out that her words were directed at Morgan.

‘You weren’t answering the door, and the phone was off the hook – we…I thought that you might have been in trouble.’

‘I was _asleep_ ,’ she told him, exasperated.

‘You could have slept at the hospital.’

Emily gave him a look. ‘ _Seriously_ , Morgan? I’ve been in hospital for two weeks. Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t do exactly the same thing.’

He didn’t answer – not because there wasn’t some acidic retort on his lips, but because Hotch chose that moment to intervene, and it was a good thing, too. Emily didn’t want to make the Bureau reimburse the hotel for the table lamp she was about to throw.

‘Is everything okay?’ Hotch asked, his voice calm. He was using the voice that he used with victims. Another day, Emily might have given him crap for it, but today, she could understand it.

‘I’m fine,’ she said shortly. ‘I just…I couldn’t stay there any longer, Hotch. It felt like the walls were closing in on me.’

‘You know that you could have stayed with any one of us, right?’ Rossi asked. Emily gave him a look. For one thing, she didn’t want to intrude, but more importantly, she didn’t want to deal with the awkward silences that would no doubt follow. “Gee, Emily, you used to work with Interpol and there was a psychopathic terrorist that wanted to kill you. Think maybe you should have told us?”

Yeah. There’s no way that would have ended badly.

‘I’m staying here,’ she told them matter-of-factly. ‘If nothing else, it’ll let me clear my head.’

‘Emily—’

‘Please don’t argue with me on this Morgan,’ Emily sighed. ‘I get that you’re angry, or worried, or all of the above, but we all know that I can’t just go back to the way things were…and I need some time to figure out just what that means.’

‘What can we do?’ Rossi asked. ‘Pack a bag? Get some DVDs?’

‘Yeah, I need to catch up on My Little Pony,’ Emily said, her voice deadpan. Rossi looked confused for half a second, before realizing that it was, in fact, a joke. ‘You really don’t have to go to all that trouble.’

‘Put it this way,’ Hotch said. ‘Do you really want to be trying to get back to your apartment by cab while you’re still on crutches?’

‘No,’ Emily admitted. ‘And I guess…it would be good to have some of my stuff here.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know where my keys are. I think Garcia has a spare.’

‘Morgan, Reid.’ Hotch looked towards the two agents. ‘Take Seaver with you.’ Morgan almost looked as though he was about to argue, because it was abundantly clear that Hotch’s main motivation was to get Morgan out of the way.

Morgan gave a quick look towards her, before leaving. Reid gave an awkward smile and a half  wave and Seaver, who looked more confused than ever, said a hurried, ‘Bye.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to talk about this, kiddo?’ Rossi asked, as soon as the door had clicked shut. Emily gave him a look at the use of epithet.

‘All anyone’s wanted to do over the last two weeks is talk,’ Emily said bluntly. ‘There isn’t exactly much to say. I went undercover, I got too deep, and I paid for it. End of story.’

‘Is it?’

Emily looked towards Hotch to support, but from the look on his face, he wasn’t going to intervene. As much as they needed to know, she didn’t exactly want to tell them.

‘Maybe…his feelings for me weren’t exactly unreciprocated.’

‘You loved him.’ Hotch said, more a statement than a question.

‘Love is a very strong word. To keep the cover alive, I had to…love _parts_ of him.’

There was a short silence. Maybe it wasn’t awkward really, but in Emily’s mind it sounded that way.

‘You’ll have to talk to the Bureau psychologist before you come back to work,’ Hotch told her. It wasn’t a subject that had been broached, and yet she knew that it had been coming.

‘I know, Hotch, I get it. You need to make sure that I’m not going to have a complete mental breakdown in the middle of a case and run naked through a police station.’

‘We wouldn’t put it that way,’ Rossi said, the beginnings of a smirk on his face. ‘I’d like to think we’d notice something before it got to that point.’

For a moment, Emily considered pointing out that they hadn’t done anything about her behavior over the last few weeks, but she changed her mind.

After all, none of this was their fault.


	16. Chapter 16

_Six weeks later._

When she walked into the BAU for the first time in what felt like an eternity, Emily tried to downplay the cane.

Her knee hurt like hell if she walked without it – and the limp was ten times worse – but it was still a sign of weakness, not to mention a tangible, constant reminder of the shame she felt.

She'd tried to keep Doyle out of her BAU life, and that had failed in the most spectacular way possible.

Ignoring the look Morgan sent in her direction, Emily hobbled towards her desk, setting her bag down on the floor before dropping into the chair. Her car was an automatic, which meant that the leg hadn't cramped up too much on the drive in, but the walk up had taken toll enough.

Even with rehabilitation, it was unlikely that she'd ever work in the field again. Her doctors had said as much, even if Emily hadn't quite gotten around to telling the team. Hell, she was having a hard enough time admitting it to herself.

'Hey,' Morgan greeted her, as he got up from his desk. 'You got a moment?'

_Crap._

Emily turned in her chair. 'Sure.'

'Can I get you a coffee?' he asked, gesturing towards the elevator bank, rather than the kitchenette, which meant he wanted to go down to the cafeteria. Emily bit her lip.

'We don't have to,' he said, hastily. 'I just thought we could…you know…try to smooth things out a little.'

'Sure,' Emily said decidedly. Her hesitation had mostly been because of the leg, but it was always going to hurt, so she was pretty much going to have to get used to it.

'You want me to carry something?' he asked, after Emily had pulled her wallet and phone out of her bag. She gave him a look that hopefully said quite clearly, "Are you kidding me?"

He kept his pace slow to match hers, which was a little irritating, but so very Morgan. For half a second, Emily considered calling him out on it, but that only would have made things worse. Telling him not to be so damn protective was like telling him not to breathe.

The walk down was awkward, mostly because he didn't seem to want to bring up whatever was on his mind until they were actually _in_ the cafeteria – a fact for which Emily was grateful. The last thing she wanted was for their conversation to spread across the gossip chain. She felt like a suspect being escorted to the interrogation room.

Downstairs, the cafeteria was quiet. Most people generally got their coffee on the way into work, rather than risking the possibility of being a few minutes late. Of course, when it rained, the place was packed.

Emily sat at one of the small wooden tables while Morgan got coffee. She stared at the wood grain, tracing its path with her finger. It provided the slightest distraction from the throb in her knee.

When Morgan returned, it was with two cups of coffee, and a chocolate brownie. He slid one cup across to her, and cut the brownie in half. He didn't speak for a long while, and Emily wondered why. It wasn't as though he was ever unsure of what to say – Derek Morgan said what he meant. He didn't generally beat around the bush.

'I don't trust easily,' he told her, matter-of-factly. 'The things that…happened to me when I was a kid make it difficult.'

Emily nodded. While Morgan had never explicitly said what Carl Buford had done to him, there were some benefits to being a profiler. Not that any of them really  _relished_ knowing.

'For what it's worth…I didn't keep it secret because I didn't trust you,' Emily told him. 'I…I was ashamed, of what I had to do. With  _him_. And I was ashamed of the fact that I felt more for him than I should have.'

Morgan gave her a surprised look. 'Guy was a sociopathic, serial-killing terrorist, who almost killed you in warehouse basement, and you loved him?'

'Well I never said it made sense,' Emily said, drily. 'But when I was with him – when I was Lauren – he made me feel like I deserved to be loved. It might seem pathetic to say that, but no-one else has ever really made me feel that way. There's a reason all my dates turn out so disastrous. Even after all this time, he's made a mark on me that I can never scrub clean.' She wasn't just talking about the bullet wound.

'After a while, it gets better,' he told her. 'He'll stop… _defining_ who you are as a person, and that crushing weight that you didn't even realize was there has suddenly lifted. You may not ever forget him, but trust me. It does get better.'

Her life had changed irrevocably, but now Doyle was dead, and she could move on.

'Good to know,' Emily smiled, though she knew it didn't quite reach her eyes.

They finished their coffee in silence, before starting to head back over to the elevators. All the reassurances in the world would change the heaviness in her heart.

The Emily Prentiss that they had known was dead.

Tied to a chair, in a warehouse, Ian Doyle had murdered her.

He had pulled the trigger eight years ago, only the bullet had taken this long to reach her.

'Everything okay?' Morgan asked, apparently noting her wince as put a little too much weight on her leg.

'Yeah,' Emily said, with a smile. 'I'm good.'


End file.
